If You Avoid the News, It Doesn't Necessarily Mean You Don't Care

The news leaves you anxious and weighed down, and it feels as if nothing can be changed. You started reading it less or almost stopped, and things got easier. Along with the relief came guilt: as if it were irresponsible and naive, as if you were burying your head in the sand while others keep track of what is going on.

But look at what is known about this behaviour. Researchers have been measuring it for almost ten years, and the picture they see is not at all the one guilt paints.

Four people in ten do the same

The Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford publishes the Digital News Report every year and for it surveys about two thousand people in each country. In 2026 the survey covers 48 markets and almost 98,000 participants. One of the questions: do you find yourself actively trying to avoid news these days? 42% of respondents do so sometimes or often. In 2017, when the question was first asked, the figure was 29% (Digital News Report 2026).

The share is highest in Croatia (63%), Turkey and Bulgaria (60% each) (report PDF, p. 15). At the same time, interest in news is falling. Across the 46 markets where a comparison is possible, the share of people who are extremely or very interested in news fell from 59% in 2021 to just under 46%.

These figures have limits. It is an online survey, and people assess their own behaviour. The report has no separate data for Russia, Ukraine or Kazakhstan, so the percentages cannot be carried over directly to Russian-speaking readers. But the scale is clear: by trying to come across the news less often, you are doing the same as four people in ten across dozens of countries.

Avoidance comes in different kinds

The institute’s researchers distinguish two kinds of avoidance (Digital News Report 2025, p. 27). People who avoid the news consistently are those who are not interested in it in general. People who avoid it selectively are those the news overloads: they protect themselves at certain times or from certain topics.

If you feel guilty for reading less news, you are unlikely to belong to the first group. Someone indifferent is not troubled by missing it. Guilt suggests rather that the news matters to you, but its flow has become heavier than you are prepared to bear.

What people give as the reason

In 2025 the institute asked those who avoid the news why they do it. More than one answer could be chosen (2025 report PDF, p. 27):

• the news has a negative effect on my mood — 39%;
• worn out by the amount of news — 31%;
• too much about wars and conflicts — 30%;
• too much politics — 29%;
• there is nothing I can do with this information — 20%;
• the news leads to arguments I’d rather avoid — 18%;
• the news doesn’t feel relevant to my life — 18%;
• the news is too hard to understand — 9%, among people under 35 — 14%.

This question was answered by everyone who avoids the news at least occasionally, not only by the 42% who do it sometimes or often.

At the top of the list are state of mind and volume: people talk about what the news does to their mood and about there being too much of it. Young people name more often than others a sense of powerlessness in the face of economic instability and climate change, toxic arguments, and the news having nothing to do with their lives. Overload has been building for a long time: in 2024 the share of people who feel overwhelmed by the amount of news was 11 percentage points higher than in 2019 (Digital News Report 2024).

The survey does not break the reasons down by kind of avoidance, and some of them, such as “doesn’t feel relevant to my life”, are closer to low interest. But the most common answers are about mood and fatigue. That is why selective avoidance is better described by the word “load” than by “laziness”: a person notices that the flow is harming them and cuts down on their encounters with it.

What exactly you are protecting yourself from

Guilt usually sounds like “I no longer know what’s going on”. But what you avoid is usually something more specific, and the next step depends on what exactly it is:

• topic: reading about war or politics is hard, while news about science, your city or your work is easy to take;
• form: you can handle the fact itself, but not the footage, videos and details;
• time: news in the morning sets off anxiety for the whole day, and before bed it keeps you from falling asleep;
• volume: a single piece of news doesn’t frighten you; what wears you out is the endless stream of updates.

Giving up the news entirely solves any of these cases in the crudest possible way. You can read about a hard topic in one source rather than in all of them at once. When the form is the problem, you can know the facts without watching the footage. A bad time can be swapped for another one, for example the middle of the day. For overload, it helps to keep two or three sources instead of twenty.

What you risk if you stop reading the news altogether

The risk here is quite down to earth. You might miss something that concerns you personally: new rules for your work or a trip, changes in the city where you live.

The question “do I know enough about the world?” doesn’t help much here, because there is no norm for it. It is more useful to ask yourself whether you will find out in time about things that will affect your plans. For the overall picture, a roundup that comes out on a schedule and has an end, without a constant stream, is enough. How to choose sources for both is covered in the article about leaving the feed.

Keep the sources you need and change how you read them

If there are sources you don’t want to give up, for example your city’s news channel or a channel for work, you don’t have to delete them. It is enough to change the order: first a short gist without pictures or videos, and the details and the original only when you yourself decide to open them.

For Telegram channels, you can set up «Essence» Bot this way. It sends short summaries of new posts from the channels you choose to your chat with the bot, with a link to the original, and summarizes heavy and sensitive topics in a neutral way. Pictures, videos and audio can be turned off in “Settings” → “Media” for the whole chat or only for news sources. The summary then keeps a note of the attachment type, and you will see the footage itself only if you open the original. More about this way of reading is in the article about distressing news. You also choose when to read: you can mute the chat with the bot in Telegram and open it when you are ready.